Pit bulls, Rottweilers and dog-wolf hybrids are responsible for most attacks — so why aren’t they more restricted?

Pit bulls are among the dogs responsible for most attacks on humans.

Photograph by: MICHAL CIZEK
, AFP/Getty Images

This time it was an 84-year-old Kamloops woman. She required 98 stitches after a Rottweiler savaged her last Sunday while leaving a restaurant.

Reports in the Kamloops Daily News say the same dog attacked a postal carrier in June, leaving bone-deep puncture wounds from wrist to elbow.

Pardon an impertinent question: Why was this dog even around to savage a second victim?

We terminate bears for rooting in garbage, wolves and coyotes for attacking livestock and cougars for hanging around campgrounds. Why the tolerance for dogs that attack people when zero tolerance is the rule for other dangerous animals?

How many toddlers have to have their faces ripped off before attack dog enthusiasts start acknowledging there’s a serious problem here — and that it’s not with the children, it’s with the dogs?

Earlier in August, a four-year-old White Rock girl required two hours of reconstructive surgery and 40 stitches to repair the facial wounds left when a pit bull went for her throat. A three-year-old Kelowna boy needed 32 stitches to repair his face after a similar pit bull attack.

In Calgary, it took three police officers and a stun gun to subdue one pit bull attacking a man and his black Lab. Then there’s the young Alberta woman sent to intensive care with life-threatening injuries after being attacked by two pit bulls.

Let’s face an unpleasant fact: Pit bulls and Rottweilers are the lethal, loaded weapons of the canine world.

A study by DogsBite.org, a U.S.-based group seeking to reduce serious dog attacks, found that from 2006 to 2008, pit bull-type dogs killed 52 Americans. From 2005 to 2011, pit bulls and Rottweilers combined accounted for 74 per cent of fatal dog attacks. Another 19 per cent were attributed to dog-wolf hybrids. So these three canine categories, comprising less than five per cent of the total dog population, inflicted 93 per cent of the fatal attacks.

This should give any reasonable person cause for alarm.

Now, before the emotive clamour about a dog-hating media conspiracy: I like dogs. I grew up with dogs. My brothers own likable dogs. What they don’t own are genetically engineered killing machines which they then delude themselves are cuddly-wuddly house pets.

Yes, you can be bitten by a Yorkie or a Siamese cat.

You can be wounded with a BB gun, too. But a BB gun in the hands of an irresponsible fool doesn’t pose the same public threat as one wandering around with a loaded rocket-propelled grenade launcher, which is why we severely restrict one and not the other.

Pit bulls, Rottweilers and wolf crosses are the bazookas of the dog world. Perfectly safe as long as they don’t go off; devastatingly lethal when they do. And nobody, least of all their owners, seems to be able to predict when they will go off.

So please, no more dismay from attack breed owners expressing surprise that their lovable doggie-woggie suddenly went berserk and tore the scalp off some infant or disembowelled a passing Chihuahua. I have as much sympathy for them as I have for people who leave loaded guns around the house and profess horror when a curious child is shot.

And spare me the duplicitous argument that it’s not the dog, it’s the dog owner.

No, it’s the dog AND the owner.

To be more precise, it’s pit bulls, the genetic traits that their breeding amplifies and the folks who think such animals make appropriate pets. Pit bulls were bred for dog fights and thus for sudden attacks — 94 per cent of attacks on children are unprovoked — aggressive tenacity, powerful jaws and a “hold and shake” bite that causes horrific injuries similar to those inflicted by shark bites. It’s no coincidence that some in-your-face pit bull owners proudly refer to their dogs as “land sharks.”

A 2011 study published by the medical journal Annals of Surgery analyzed 15 years of dog bite hospital admissions. It reported that in the U.S., one person is now killed by a pit bull every 14 days and one body part is now severed and lost in a pit bull attack every 5.4 days.

In the U.S., 885,000 people a year require medical attention for dog bites, 31,000 require reconstructive surgery and total losses related to dog bites may exceed $1 billion per year. Most troubling, dog bites now account for fully 20 per cent of children’s visits to American emergency wards.

“Attacks by pit bulls are associated with higher morbidity rates, higher hospital charges, and a higher risk of death than are attacks by other breeds of dogs,” researchers concluded and observed that strict regulation of pit bulls might substantially reduce mortality rates related to dog bites.

Yet in the bizarre rhetoric of the attack dog lobby, when it comes to pit bull and Rottweiler savagings, maimings and deaths, it’s not the attack dog culture that’s held to blame. It’s the rest of us.

And no, this isn’t a knee-jerk call for banning specific breeds.

It is a suggestion that perhaps we should have a serious public discussion about whether to make the licensing of attack dog owners and the registration of such breeds mandatory, with liability insurance of the kind we deem appropriate for automobile owners, big fines for owners of such dogs if they are found out of their direct control and criminal liability when those dogs attack people or animals.

If dog enthusiasts have other proposals for addressing this problem, let’s by all means hear them.

But no more conspiracy theories and heaping blame on the victims, the increasingly fearful public and the media as a way of evading what poses the biggest public threat — a dangerous and inappropriate combination of dogs and owners of a particular kind.

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